Talk:Camp Merritt, New Jersey

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Transport to embarkation piers

The official, public domain, The Sinews of War: Army Logistics 1775—1953 has some detail on the movement of troops from the camp to the embarkation piers and transports. Text from page 347:

Most units moved to the piers and boarded the transports within two or three days of arrival at an embarkation camp. From Camp Merritt most of the troops moved to the piers by ferry. “Normally” they were scheduled to be on the piers to begin boarding at 0800 when the pier inspectors and checkers came on duty. It was over an hour's march from the camp to Alpine Landing, where contingents of 2,000 to 3,000 men - a number equal to the capacity of one ferryboat - would march out at half-hour intervals between 0100 and 0400 or 0430 hours. It would take about half an hour to load a ferryboat, and then two hours to reach the piers. The contingents would ordinarily be made up of platoons or detachments from several regiments or other units so that each ferryboat would discharge a share of its passengers at each pier being used that day. In this way work could proceed at the same time on all the piers with a minimum of congestion, and unit integrity would be restored at the piers while several transports were being loaded simultaneously. Sometimes there would be a second embarkation in the afternoon. On the same day other units would be moving by the Long Island Railroad from Camp Mills and Camp Upton to ferryboats at Long Island City.

After some experience, embarkation proceeded rapidly. The Leviathan could take aboard 10,000 troops in two hours. The record day for embarkation was 31 August 1918 when over 51,000 troops boarded seventeen vessels at the New York port, said to be the largest number of passengers ever to have sailed from any port in a single day up to that time.

The model of efficiency of the Ports of Embarkation, which included satellite troop camps and cargo facilities in an entire region, would be repeated and even enhanced in World War II with innovations even to packaging for efficient packing of items including boxed aircraft into hulls. Palmeira (talk) 19:44, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

References

Two references have (or will have) extensive individual page cites. The existing Camp Merritt: A Documentary by Howard W Rose; Harrinton Park Historical Society, 1984, is found on WorldCat and Google Books. The last gives ISBNs 0972686401, 9780972686402 but a search of the Library of Congress Catalog has no results for the author, title nor the ISBNs. WorldCat shows it in libraries, including US Army Corps of Engineers Library, HECSA Library and United States Military Academy USMA Library. It is probably a reasonably good reference but text cannot be verified except by locating the actual document. Some appears to conflict with official sources. The Road to France has extensive coverage of Camp Merritt, including detailed discussion of the "casuals" problem that is not well covered in other references in the list. "Casuals" were first simply individuals under orders but not attached to units. The processing of a casual — a single person "unit" — for camp facilities and actual movement to France took approximately the same amount of administrative work as an entire unit and thus posed a difficulty for the Port of Embarkation and its camps. The early ones were mostly specialist officers. Later they were "stragglers" — mostly men who had been in hospital or otherwise innocently missing the unit movement. Only later did those A.W.O.L. or deserters come under the "casual" category. Camp Merritt became the main camp handling all "casuals" and Chapter XVI is devoted to the issue and the solutions. Its handling of casuals soon extended to replacements arriving directly from draft boards rather than as units that could be handled in the same manner. That unique position alone is worth coverage in the article as the Camp's reach extended nationwide in the matter, particularly regarding deserters. Some of the local history references appear to have picked up parts of the story, as with transportation to the embarkation piers, and are not entirely accurate. An important fact: Troops moving as units arrived at the camps by rail. A description of such movement, with the 91st Division taking "half a hundred heavy trains" gives a hint of why ferry transportation with two to three thousand men per ferry was used for the final stage to the transports. All unit arrivals at the New York POE embarkation piers for loading on transports was by water. Palmeira (talk) 15:09, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Hoboken Casual Company

There were many of these companies formed during World War I. I could not find a description in a reliable source about the mission of the unit, but it appears they were formed from troops at Camp Merritt that had returned from overseas duty and required further transport to stations closer to their home of record or duty station. There are many references to numbered "Hoboken Casual Company" or "Hob Cas Co" in Newspapers.com and service records of troops. Since there were many of these units formed (probably on an ad hoc short term basis), I recommend adding an official description of the unit with a ref if found in a reliable source. Note: the Marine Corps sometimes uses the term "Casual Company or CasCo — a holding unit/formation of Marines awaiting one of the following: discharge from the Corps, training (usually at a formal school), or deployment to a unit". Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 14:39, 13 November 2022 (UTC)